The fun thing about buying shares in retailers is that you can walk in and inspect your potential investment. Whether this is actually a useful exercise is debatable, as we run the risk of assigning too much significance to the factors we can see or easily imagine — the so-called ‘availability bias’. But it is hard to resist.
For example, on a recent visit to Halfords (LSE: HFD) for a replacement side-light I was able to look around. Notice that the first place I thought of going for such a specific item was Halfords, not Tesco (LSE: TSCO) or Sainsbury (LSE: SBRY)….